Thursday, January 19, 2023

Reunited: 20th Century Foxes

I guess I just tended to be a rather dense kid (and still a sort of thick-headed adult!), but I constantly misunderstood the names of various people that I would overhear my grandparents discussing. There were Ellafitz Gerald, Yvonda Carlo and some gal named Donna Meechee. Only, they were actually referring to (as I would blushingly realize later), Ella Fitzgerald, Yvonne De Carlo and one Don Ameche!  I'm sure there were others, too. But today we're taking a brief look at Ameche, a 20th Century Fox contract player, and the way he was reunited with one of his fellow performers across the decades.

To some readers, Ameche may only be familiar for his Oscar-winning role in 1985's Cocoon (or perhaps in a latter-day guest role on The Golden Girls, in which he played the long-lost father of Rose Nylund.)

You wouldn't be too off-base if you figured this post concerns Ameche and his costar in half a dozen films, Alice Faye. She is the one who first springs to mind as a romantic co-lead with him. However, it's another gal who we'll be looking at, one who has a more longstanding - if less heralded - association with him.

In 1941, Ameche was cast in what was to be a Fritz Lang film, co-written by Samuel Fuller. Confirm or Deny was based upon the real bombing of Associated Press offices in London during WWII. Ameche was a correspondent who falls for a teletype operator played by Joan Bennett. This was the first pairing of these stars. Released on December 12th, mere days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it ought to have been a smash, but perhaps it was "too soon." Today the movie is barely-remembered (though fondly so) by only tried and true fans of classic movies.

Ameche was given some rapid-fire Sam Fuller dialogue to spout in his pursuit of the pretty Bennett.

Bennett had surely been involved in the film though her association with Lang, the initial director, as her husband and she had formed a production company with him and did Man Hunt earlier that year. But he took a hike after about a week when the studio imposed changes to the tone and the story line of the movie. She did work for him three more times, however, in The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945) and Secret Beyond the Door... (1947.)

Raven-tressed Bennett was a switch for Ameche from the more familiar light-blonde Faye. Ironically, Bennett was a natural blonde and had been working for years as one until Trade Winds (1938) when director Tay Garnett convinced her to go dark. She kept it brunette virtually all the time thereafter.

In 1942, Ameche and Bennett were teamed again, this time in a mistaken identity comedy called Girl Trouble. She played a rich girl whose funds are tied up in England, thanks to the war, and must rent her upscale apartment to Venezuelan rubber magnate Ameche. He mistakes her for the maid and she allows it, staying on in her own home as a result.

The farcical bit of wartime escapism wound up annoying about as many audience members as it entertained and it, too, sank out of most moviegoers' memories as time marched on. This might have been the end of Ameche and Bennett's association, but there was more to come after all.

In 1957, the two were paired once again as the parents of young Carol Lynley in an episode of The Dupont Show of the Month. Junior Miss had been a series of stories in The New Yorker, then collected into book form, then a Broadway play, then a 1945 film starring Peggy Ann Garner and now a TV musical, broadcast in color! Burton Lane and Dorothy Field penned six songs for the show, one of which ("Let's Make It Christmas All Year 'Round") was sung by the two stars and their TV daughters, Lynley and Jill St. John.

The 1950s for Ameche and Bennett were a far cry from their earlier big screen successes. Ameche only made one minor film appearance the entire decade and had turned to the stage for employment. Bennett's career had been derailed by a 1951 scandal when her husband shot her agent, thinking them to be involved in a love affair. She only managed a handful of films after that. But 1958 found them seated side-by-side as panelists on To Tell the Truth.

Among the guests they were impelled to sort out was Theodor Geisel, better known to millions of readers as Dr. Seuss. (Neither one of them selected the actual Geisel.) At the time of this show, Ameche was 45 while Bennett was 43. Seventeen years after their initial movie together, this, too, might have served as the end of their professional association. But it still was not.

You can certainly be forgiven if you don't recognize this person or project...! Monie Ellis, a briefly employed starlet of the 1970s, was selected to essay the title role in Gidget Gets Married (1972.) Sandra Dee had first played the part in 1959's Gidget while Deborah Walley took over for Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) and Cindy Carol did Gidget Goes to Rome (1963.) Sally Field played the part in a 1965 sitcom and then Karen Valentine inherited it for the TV-movie Gidget Grows Up in 1969. (Caryn Richman took over the oft-played part in 1985's Gidget's Summer Reunion and even though the role had never been played by the same gal twice, she did so in 1986's ludicrously-titled The New Gidget! Please. There was ALWAYS a new Gidget....!) The very latest incarnation (and I am not making this up) is from a transsexual porn performer named Julie Bond who performed (and how, I'm sure!) in 1990's Gidget Goes Bi!

Anyway.... In this rendition of the old warhorse, Gidget finally marries Moondoggie, played by Michael Burns. Imagine my delight when watching the ceremony and seeing Poseidon's Underworld's favorite extra, leoda Richards, as a featured guest. She's even in the receiving line in-between the father of the bride and the groom (but she's not Gidget's mother.)

He's fresh out of the service and takes a job in a new town. The owner of his company lives in an elegantly-appointed mansion. The newlyweds pay a call on the big cheese and await his arrival in the wood-paneled study.

The CEO is played by Don Ameche, and as his wife we find Joan Bennett! At this point it had been 30 years since their initial movie together.

Now 64 and 62 in real life, they are depicted here as the parents of a preteen son! Ameche had six kids in real life, but was 39 by the time of the last one. Oddly enough, Bennett, who had first wed at 16 and had a child at 17 was a grandmother at 39! She proceeded to have three other children, the last one when she was 38, making her fourth child and her grandchild only about one year apart.

The chief crux of conflict in this feather-weight (and often feather-brained) TV-movie/potential pilot (?) is the fact that the town where Gidget lives is divided into three separate "classes" and Ameche prefers that they don't mix! She unwittingly hosts a no-no dinner party with a variety of people and he gets miffed... Notice Elinor Donahue in the red dress. She's one of many guests stars who appear in the movie, along with Bob Cummings, Macdonald Carey and Paul Lynde. Gidget's initial home is the Father Knows Best house, a series in which Donahue starred as a youth!

Bitter and practically alone, Ameche has some decisions to make about his employees and the village built around his company.

This marks the final collaboration between Ameche and Bennett. He enjoyed a comeback with Trading Places (1983) - despite the director having been told prior to casting that the actor was dead! - and continued to work right up until his true demise in 1993 from prostate cancer. He was 85. Bennett, who by this time had already enjoyed renewed fame from Dark Shadows, worked several more times up through the early-1980s. She died in 1990 of a heart attack at age 80.

And with that, this edition of Reunited is a wrap! Till next time.

19 comments:

  1. Great post.
    Wonder how he would have been in Father of the Bride... probably not!
    Overall prefer Joan over Constance but Hepburn got in her (C) way at RKO, so who knows what C could have been.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joan Bennett just doesn’t register with me. I’ve only seen Ameche in light movies. He may not have been a top tier star but, like William Powell, he had a cheerful, urbane, inherently intelligent presence that made even mediocre material more entertaining. You were just glad to see them. And didn’t Ameche and Joan age well! An inspiration to us all (who have just learned we have an arthritic knee - sigh).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the great post, Poseidon!

    I'm a big fan of both Ameche and Bennett. I somehow missed Bennett's 1951 scandal, which is weird because I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. I have not seen Confirm or Deny, but it's on my list now. I actually saw Gidget Get's Married. I don't remember much about it but it seems to me that Gidget was really annoying, but Moondoggie was really hot.

    Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I was a kid, I was baffled by a 1933 book I found that referred to Joan Bennett as "blonder and prettier than ever," because at the time my frame of reference on her was DARK SHADOWS and a few photos from later in her movie career.

    But she was blonde naturally, and even played "Amy" in the 1933 Katharine Hepburn/ George Cukor version of LITTLE WOMEN. But for the most part, her blonde roles aren't as well-remembered as her brunette roles-- where she got to play something weightier.

    However, her brunette makeover involved a bit more than just a color shift-- she actually lifted Hedy Lamarr's entire look at first, down to the center-parting. Lamarr was the hot new thing in town and was getting a lot of buzz at that point.

    While this style-swiping was commonplace in Hollywood in those days, this particular makeover caused a lot of comment and even inspired Cole Porter to take a jab at it in "Let's Not Talk About Love," in which Danny Kaye asked:

    "Let's talk of Lamarr, that Hedy so fair / Why does she let Joan Bennett wear all her old hair?"

    Thanks for another great post and for all you do, Poseidon! Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  5. One thing that made me do a real double-take (and even click on the image to enlarge it) was the framecap from GIDGET GETS MARRIED where the "newlyweds" meet Don Ameche and Joan Bennett-- and Gidget looks hugely pregnant!

    Of course, it's actually just that vest she's wearing hanging away from her body and blending with the matching skirt to create an illusion of a well-filled maternity dress. Still, it had me going for a second, imagining that the title should've been GIDGET HAS TO GET MARRIED-- NOW.

    (Kind of ironic that you mention Joan Bennett's on-screen and real-life offspring in context with that shot.)

    And surprisingly, there was actually even one more "Gidget" spinoff not in that comprehensive list. Hanna-Barbera did an animated GIDGET MAKES THE WRONG CONNECTION for a 1972 episode of THE ABC SATURDAY SUPERSTAR MOVIE, which was a short-lived Saturday morning series of unrelated hour-long animated spinoffs of live-action shows, like THE BRADY BUNCH, NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR, and LOST IN SPACE.

    If you're curious to see this thing, it's available on YouTube (but GIDGET GOES BI was probably better):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxGqD8nLWNE

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fun post Poseidon!

    I like Don Ameche, a facile and pleasant leading man who aged into a wry, amusing character actor (his acceptance speech upon winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Cocoon is one of the classiest I've ever heard) but I ADORE Joan Bennett!

    Never has a hair color change made such a difference in a performer's onscreen energy though I'm sure it was a combination of a certain maturity (and better roles) occurring at the same moment that she changed her look. I've seen most of her films (there are three very early ones including a co-starrer with Spencer Tracy-She Wanted a Millionaire-which seem virtually impossible to locate) and while she was an amiable actress in her early work she often verged on colorless. The switch in appearance seemed to bring her into focus and make her more compelling with a shift in her demeanor to a rougher (though still ladylike) edge. It probably also had something to do with her work with Fritz Lang who recognized and brought out some of her more vivid colors. From what I've read she was quite the straight shooter in real life with a salty tongue who was able to stand up to Lang's infamous temper and give as good as she got.

    Both of their films together are decent. Girl Trouble is a cute bauble but nothing more however Confirm or Deny was quite gripping and it's a pity the movie isn't more well known. I haven't seen Junior Miss but have seen Gidget Gets Married (I think I've seen all the Gidget's....excepting the porn) but so long ago I can't honestly say I recall much of it. It's funny how in each iteration they always had a new actress in the role and yet all these years later when you say Gidget Sally Field is the face that pops up even though her series only ran a season. I know she's happier with that identification than The Flying Nun! And she's right there now with Don & Joan in terms of career longevity.

    It great that these two old pros managed to both keep their hand in, and in Don Ameche's case nearly eclipse his early work, almost to the end of their lives.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In the 60's Don Ameche hosted a TV series featuring circus performances. Seems like he travelled around Europe and visited circuses in different countries. He sat with the audience and introduced the performers to the TV audience. He was a charming and genial host who gave the audience lots of information about the acts, which was a large reason it was a pretty entertaining show.

    I also noticed something interesting in your photos of Leoda Richards. In the inset picture when she's in the receiving line she's wearing an enormous corsage but in the main photo when she's greeting the happy bride, Gidget, the corsage seems to have jumped from Leoda's shoulder to the woman to her right!

    BrianB

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very cool post! I can't think of Bennett without remembering her fab turn in "Dark Shadows", she was queen of the cue cards during that show. She'd go into these longggg pauses, or say her lines in a "most...dramatic....WAY", while scanning the cue card that had to be just off camera. THEN she showed up as the headmistress in the over the top THING that is the original "Suspiria" starring as "Madame Blanc". These two roles marked her fondly forever in the minds of horror fans. Immortality comes in many forms... During her later career she still looked quite striking, and didn't seem to have much work done to her face, or any at all. She had a regal, commanding air in "Dark Shadows" and the Victorian hair and costumes suited her very well (as that style suits so many women). Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great post, Poseidon, and you make me want to have a Joan Bennett/Don Ameche Film Festival right now! I was lucky enough to meet both stars late in their lives, Mr. Ameche played the Stage Manager in a Broadway production of Our Town and graciously signed a 1930s photo of his debonair self at the theater's stage door, which I proudly hung for years along with a signed photo of his frequent co-star, the lovely Alice Faye. Miss Bennett was a friend of a friend and was delighted to sign her book, The Bennett Playbill, along with some gorgeous 1940s glamour shots for my late husband and me, he adored her in Scarlett Street. She was a lovely lady with a wonderful voice, very kind to her fans, and I was a big fan all the way from Little Women through Dark Shadows which I watched every day after school in the late 1960s. Thanks for a terrific remembrance of two fine stars.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Going back to Donna Meechee, we had a statue in our house called the "infinite prayge" it was years before I realized this was the "Infant of Prague" maybe it's an Irish thing?

    I like the way these two look together but have never seen them costar in anything I can remember. I am not a fan of her films with Fritz lang but the one you opened with sounds great.

    Gidget goes bi! oh the travesty. I wonder how they avoided getting sued? I recognize Joan from the later period circa her Matriarch role on Dark Shadows. I can't wait to read the rest of the comments.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I was in college before I realized it was not “Haulin’ Oats” but “Hall and Oates”.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Looking back at your photos Poseidon, I can't help but notice, nay...fixate, on those half chandelier on the wall things behind them in the library. Are those actual LIT candles? Because if they are, I'm plotzed. There they are, just hanging out around the house, she's all cozy reading a magazine and he's...reading a newspaper and those wall things are LIT! I. Love. IT.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Brad, Spence seems pretty iconic in "FOTB," and I doubt Don could have been any more memorable for most people. In her day, Constance Bennett was the highest paid female star of all. Wildly popular. I never claimed to have any taste, but my all-time fave role of hers was in "Madame X" in 1966 -- and she died before it opened!

    Dan, we got about 6" of snow the other day and I've been nursing a wrenched back after shoveling. So I hear ya! LOL And more is on the way tomorrow, but I'm going to sprinkle some de-icer and hope for the best this round...

    A, Joan's agent was Jennings Lang, who later became a very notable producer at Universal ("Earthquake" anyone??) His wife/widow, Monica Lewis, wrote about the incident in her memoir, attempting to clear up various misconstrued details over the years (such as his being shot in the groin.) It was quite a sensation at the time it occurred (when gunfire wasn't a daily occurrence!) I did think Monie Ellis was annoying in this "Gidget" but I had trouble reconciling cute little Michael Burns as the Moondoggie who'd been played by taller, darker guys in the past.

    hsc, it certainly was a major change when Joan went from blonde to brunette. I had erroneously believed that she died it for "Trade Winds" but that was a wig. Then she did dye it when the look worked for her. They tried out Hedy's hair on another Joan (Crawford) for "Ice Follies of 1939" too! When something's hot, like "The Farrah" or "The Rachel" many people hop on the bandwagon. :-) Oh, and I also thought she looked pregnant in that stiff vest!! I almost mentioned it in the caption in case - as you say - someone would think she HAD to get married. Ha ha ha!!!! I knew about the animated "Gidge" but skipped over it since no live actress was seen in it. My GOD, they drove that whole concept into the ground. It's amazing there was never a "Gidget & Moondoggie in Space!"

    joel65913, I tried to locate that MIA movie just for you, too, and came up empty. I hate it when things are so elusive... Poor Sally Field was very charming as "Gidget" but they canceled the show prematurely. It became a big hit in almost immediate reruns, but it was too late to reinvigorate it, so she was stuck in "The Flying Nun" for several seasons instead, which she pretty much loathed (or at least the stigma from it!)

    BrianB, I had no clue about that circus show...! I have to confess I always found Don Ameche so SEVERE on "To Tell the Truth." He would needle the contestants as if they were on trial for murder! LOL He really ought to have played a district attorney on TV if you ask me. That is a GREAT catch about the corsage...! I missed it entirely. She was ALWAYS featured up close to the stars whenever that opportunity arose. They probably filmed the group shot, then when it was time for the receiving line promoted her to "family" and pinned her then. I love spotting her in, well, virtually every movie ever made! Ha ha! Kathryn Janssen, too!

    Ptolemy1, yes, Joan did inherit a whole new raft of fans with the mystery and horror genre later in life. My takeaway when it comes to her is that she had pretty small lips and invariably did what ladies often did then (such as Angela Lansbury to name another) which is to put the lipstick way beyond the true lip line. Once lip liner came into vogue, it became easier to cheat that a bit more than without it. (You can see it in the last closeup of her.) BTW - in an earlier scene, those candelabras are off and you can see these very thick, dark orange bulbs in each outlet. Then when they are on, the inner filament is small, like flame, and tinted orange by the glass covering. So the illusion comes across pretty well as long as the light switch is on. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Almost did it... Almost lost all my replies because it was too long. But I checked this time. :-)

    *********

    Gingerguy, I'm sure I first saw Joan in "Suspiria" myself. I rented that waaayy back in the day, long before I'd ever seen her elsewhere. I can't recall too much about it, though! And I was in my 40s - at least! - before I ever saw any of "Dark Shadows." Just one of many stars I discovered backwards and whose early work I had to find out about later. Thanks!

    Dan! That's HYSTERICAL!!! So glad I'm not alone in my misinterpretations of famous names. I once won a costume contest as a middling Darryl Hall. My buddy was a stunning Oates and we nailed it as one unit.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I think I told you this before, but Deborah Walley of "Gidget Goes Hawaiian" was my 3rd Cousin on my Father's side. She died in 2001. I just discovered this while working the Family Tree.

    The blonde in the TV Movie with Gidget getting married looks like a blonde Jessica Biel, from "The Sinner" and "7th Heaven".

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yes, you did, but it's a neat tidbit worth repeating. 😉 I watched Deborah not long ago in a Disney movie with Michael Callan.

    ReplyDelete
  17. People seemed to age a lot faster back in those days! They both were in their early forties on To Tell the Truth but they both looked older! Maybe it was bad light
    ing or something in those early TV days. Today, early forties are considered young! LOL They looked better ( and younger ) in the Gidget movie appearance when they were in their sixties! But again, they were probably photographed with a more flattering light for the motion picture!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Ameche entered American vernacular as a nickname for "telephone", courtesy of his role in The Alexander Graham Bell Story. Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire, "Catch you on the Ameche."

    ReplyDelete
  19. rigs-in-gear, in those pre-TV days, people likely associated the stars playing real life figures with their roles even more so than they would later. I think the first Ameche movie I ever saw (because of its disaster elements) was "In Old Chicago," but I think "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" was second. I wanted to see the unusual conceit of all four Young sisters playing sisters in it...!

    ReplyDelete

Abusive or hateful comments will be removed.